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Saturday, July 21, 2012

Child predator sentenced to life imprisonment in Louisiana

SHREVEPORT, La. — A Fort Bliss, Texas,
man was sentenced to life in prison Friday for producing and distributing child
pornography, following an investigation by U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).

Robert Cuff, 49, pleaded guilty in
December 2011 to engaging in a child exploitation enterprise. Cuff, a command
master chief in the United States Navy, was assigned as the senior enlisted
advisor to the Joint Task Force North at Fort Bliss at the time of his arrest.
Evidence showed he joined and participated in the Dreamboard child exploitation
bulletin board while stationed at Fort Bliss.

At sentencing, the court found that not
only had Cuff participated in a child exploitation enterprise, he had also
engaged in a pattern of activity involving the sexual exploitation of a
5-year-old child.

Jonathan Mayer, 29, of Newport, Tenn.,
and Shane Micah Turner, 33, of Roy, Utah, were also sentenced in connection
with their participation in the Dreamboard bulletin board. Each received a
sentence of 17 ½ years in prison followed by lifetime supervised release, as a
result of both defendants pleading guilty to conspiring to advertise child
pornography. The sentences were handed down by U.S. District Judge S. Maurice
Hicks.

United States Attorney Stephanie A.
Finley stated, "These defendants, and people like them, who advertise,
participate, distribute or exploit children to access child pornography work
hard to evade law enforcement and disguise what they are doing. Their sole
purpose is to view children hurting for their own sexual satisfaction. We agree
with the court's statement that this defendant was much like a Dr. Jekyll and
Mr. Hyde; to those who knew him in the military, he appeared to be an
outstanding sailor, but as the judge stated, this defendant had a dark side
involving the advertising of child pornography and the rape of a young child.

We want people who get engulfed in this
type of disturbing behavior to know that they will face serious consequences
for their actions. Our office will continue to vigorously prosecute this type
of criminal activity to the fullest extent of the law. We want the community to
know that the U.S. Attorney's Office and the Department of Justice, along with
our federal, state and local partners, are committed to protecting children
from these vile criminals."

"Cuff and the other conspirators of
the nightmare called Dreamboard mistakenly believed that they could commit
unspeakable crimes against children and evade detection by law enforcement,"
said Raymond R. Parmer Jr., special agent in charge of HSI New Orleans.
"Criminals with this kind of depravity in mind should know that we are
ever vigilant. For every tactic taken to evade law enforcement, we will adapt
our strategies to find them and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the
law." Parmer oversees HSI activities in Louisiana, Arkansas, Alabama,
Mississippi and Tennessee.

To date, 42 out of 72 individuals have
been convicted for their participation in an international criminal network,
known as Dreamboard, which was dedicated to the sexual abuse of children and
the creation and dissemination of graphic images and videos of child sexual
abuse throughout the world.

The charges against these defendants
were a result of Operation Delego, an ongoing HSI investigation launched in
December 2009 that targeted individuals around the world for their
participation in Dreamboard. Dreamboard was a private, members-only, online
bulletin board created and operated to promote pedophilia and encourage the
sexual abuse of very young children in an environment designed to avoid law
enforcement detection. Operation Delego represents the largest prosecution to
date in the United States of individuals who participated in an online bulletin
board conceived and operated for the sole purpose of promoting child sexual
abuse, disseminating child pornography and evading law enforcement.

All 72 defendants were charged with
conspiring to advertise and distribute child pornography, and 50 were also
charged with engaging in a child exploitation enterprise. Out of the 72 charged
defendants, 55 have been arrested in the United States and abroad. Forty-one
individuals have pleaded guilty and one defendant was convicted after a
four-day jury trial. Twenty-eight of the 41 individuals who pleaded guilty have
been sentenced to prison and received sentences ranging from 15 years to life.
Thirteen of the 72 charged individuals remain at large and are known only by
their online identities. Efforts to identify and apprehend these individuals
continue.

According to court documents and
evidence presented at the trial of defendant John Wyss, aka "Bones,"
Dreamboard members traded graphic images and videos of adults molesting
children 12 years of age or younger, often violently, and collectively created
a massive private library of images of child sexual abuse. The international
group prized and encouraged the creation of new images and videos of child
sexual abuse â€“ numerous Dreamboard members sexually abused children, produced
images and videos of the abuse, and shared the images and videos with other
members of Dreamboard.

Dreamboard members employed a variety of
measures designed to conceal their criminal activity from detection by law
enforcement. Members communicated using aliases or "screen names,"
rather than their actual names. Links to child pornography posted on Dreamboard
were required to be encrypted with a password that was shared only with other
members. Members accessed the board via proxy servers, which routed internet
traffic through other computers so as to disguise a user's actual location and
prevent law enforcement from tracing Internet activity. Dreamboard members also
encouraged the use of encryption programs on their computers, which
password-protect computer files to prevent law enforcement from accessing them
in the event of a court-authorized search.

Membership was tightly controlled by the
administrators of Dreamboard, who required prospective members to upload child
pornography portraying children 12 years of age or younger when applying for
membership. Once they were given access, members were required continually to
upload images of child sexual abuse in order to maintain membership. Members
who failed to follow this rule would be expelled from the group.

The bulletin board included rules of
conduct, printed in English, Russian, Japanese and Spanish. The rules required
prospective members to upload material depicting children under the age of 12
engaged in sexually explicit activity. Approved members were required to
observe strict posting rules designed to encourage members to disseminate large
quantities of child pornography, thwart efforts by law enforcement to identify
members of the board, and encourage members to sexually abuse children in order
to produce new material for the board. The board rules also required members to
organize postings based on the type of content. One particular category was
entitled "Super Hardcore." The rules for that category described in
graphic language that the only posts permitted were those involving adults
having violent sexual intercourse with "very young kids" who were
being subjected to both physical and sexual abuse and were obviously "in
distress, and or crying."

Operation Delego involved extensive
international cooperation to identify and apprehend Dreamboard members abroad.
Through coordination amongst ICE; the Department of Justice; Eurojust, the
European Union's Judicial Cooperation Unit; and dozens of law enforcement
agencies throughout the world, 20 Dreamboard members across five continents and
14 countries have been arrested to date outside the United States, including
two of the five lead administrators of the board. Those countries include
Canada, Denmark, Ecuador, France, Germany, Guatemala, Hungary, Kenya, the
Netherlands, the Philippines, Qatar, Serbia, Sweden and Switzerland. Numerous
foreign investigations related to Operation Delego remain ongoing. The location
and arrest of Dreamboard members abroad have led to the capture and
investigation of other global targets.

Evidence obtained during the operation
revealed that at least 38 children across the world were suffering sexual abuse
at the hands of the members of the group. Efforts by federal, state, local and
international law enforcement to locate and identify the victims of sexual
abuse and exploitation by Dreamboard members are ongoing.

The investigation was conducted by HSI,
the Child Exploitation Section of ICE's Cyber Crimes Center, CEOS, CEOS's High
Technology Investigative Unit and 35 ICE offices in the United States and 11
ICE attaches offices in 13 countries around the world, with assistance provided
by numerous local and international law enforcement agencies across the United
States and throughout the world.

This investigation was part of Operation
Predator, a nationwide HSI initiative to protect children from sexual
predators, including those who travel overseas for sex with minors, Internet
child pornographers, criminal alien sex offenders and child sex traffickers.
HSI encourages the public to report suspected child predators and any
suspicious activity through its toll-free hotline at 1-866-DHS-2ICE or by
completing its online tip form. Both are staffed around the clock by
investigators.